Writing for the Center For Security Policy earlier this month, Fred Fleitz pointedly detailed five “myths” regarding the P5+1 JCPOA (“Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”) deal the U.S. made with Iran in 2015.  His analysis of these myths is intended to legitimize President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from that deal. The myths include (1) the JCPOA is a good agreement, (2) our leaving is immoral because the agreement is legally binding, (3) Iran was complying so withdrawal was unnecessary, (4) the U.S. should have stayed in the agreement and fixed it, and (5) our withdrawal is ineffective and will cause war.

Although the article is a thorough reprise of the administration’s logic, that “deal” was a charade and a farce in a way not mentioned in the article.   How can you strike a “deal” without acknowledging that Iran was (and still is) on our State Dept. list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1984?  The ayatollahs and mullahs of Iran were behind the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, the Khobar Towers bombing, the bombing of Americans in Lebanon, and involved in the WTC attack. Iran for 40 years has been regularly promoting public, violent anti-American rhetoric. A more complete listing of Iran’s terrorist activities under this post-Shah regime can be found here. Any one of these actions noted above could have been grounds for declaring war on Iran.  

We are negotiating with a rabid and demonic government.  How can anyone think negotiations are possible if one reads  histories of Iranian politics going back to the Savafid dynasties in the 1500s?  We are not dealing with a couple of generations of devilish madmen, but with centuries of bloodthirsty power plays. There is absolutely no history of democratic longing or individual rights in that rotten country.  Even street demonstrations about democracy and not wearing hijabs (they are called “chadors” in Iran) are not measures of Iranian love of freedom. They don’t have “moderates” in the sense we might have of the meaning of “moderate.”

The Obama administration did not even require that the JCPOA to be signed by Iran. Included in a letter to Rep. Mike Pompeo in 2015, is the following statement: “The success of the JCPOA will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed [my italics], but rather on the extensive verification measures we have put in place, as well as Iran’s understanding that we have the capacity to re-impose -- and ramp up -- our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments.” 

Despite the enthusiastic endorsement by Ernest Moniz, a former MIT professor who worked as secretary of Energy in the Obama administration, an MIT publication soliciting opinions of other MIT professors of physics and political science provided only limited and half-hearted endorsements of the deal.  Most of the professors said that it’s probably the best deal we could expect, although far from perfect.  This is hardly the type of assurance about verification that one would desire or expect from a deal promoting world safety and security.

Further, look at the U.S. negotiation team that signed the 2015 agreement. It was headed by John Kerry.  Kerry is Jane Fonda in pants. Despite his dignified demeanor, this writer believes he is driven by fantasies of himself presiding over an ordered world. The key word here is “fantasies.”  That envisaged order is not meant to be; the order he imagines is an illegitimate order.  An order that accepts the viability of demented mullahs is not a legitimate order.  That is something he and his ilk cannot seem to accept.  An order that accepts Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong is not a legitimate order.  An order that accepts those who reject the holy and eternal viability of the individual, an individual created in the image of God, is not to be accepted. It is to be resisted.

He is two-faced and self-serving to an extreme.  As he himself expressed with a type of mumbo-jumbo clarity, he was for the Iraq War until he was against it. Various articles at the time referred to his flip-flops and rationalizations of those flip-flops as showing him to be conflicted or nuanced.  However, this writer sees Kerry as an opportunist, someone who is gifted at pointing his finger in the air and seeing which way the wind is blowing.  He knows how to convert tense, polarizing issues -- like the Vietnam War years ago -- to his personal advantage.

His boss, Barack Obama, had as his goal the weakening of America’s dominance on the world stage, and the strengthening of other world players under the misguided idea that this path strengthens “equality” and a more harmonious world.  The globalist ideal persistently presents itself as most likely to fulfill the human longing for peace.  Yet, the man or woman of faith and true understanding knows that manmade peace is only fleeting, especially when consummated with bad actors on the world stage.  There was no peace after deal-making and capitulation at Munich over Czechoslovakia by Neville Chamberlain with Adolf Hitler.  There was no peace or even accommodation with North Korea after some pseudo-agreements with the Clinton administration.  There was no peace after Bismarck concluded his secret treaties with his neighbors in the 19^th century.  And the treaties guaranteeing divisions of Vietnam and Korea did not bring peace to those embattled lands. 

No. The fierce, jealous, and expansionist powers involved in those deals continued to insist on war and conquest.  Just as the prophet Jeremiah saw in Judea’s perpetual deal-making with Babylonia and Egypt that there was “peace, peace when there is no peace,” the globalists, including and especially Obama, think they are promoting the family of man, but in actuality are promoting death and endless conflict. The Arab Spring that he and Hillary Clinton nurtured was not a move toward democracy in the Arab world but toward even greater unrest and dislocation than had already existed. Right motives are the key to right thinking.

Thus the Iran deal was wrong because of the motives and philosophies of the leaders on both sides and not mainly in the details of the deal itself.  Bad people make bad deals. We had to forego that deal because the Iranians do not deserve to have a deal made with them.